Unst and Harrogate

The prize winning coloured Shetland Sheep at the very wet Unst show last Saturday.

We're off to Harrogate for the British Wool Weekend this weekend, so come and say hello if you're around. Hopefully be back with lots of photos from the show - yay!

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The Cunningsburgh Show

    

A mammoth photo post of the Cunningsburgh Show this Wednesday. 

1.Entrance to the Wool tent  2, 3, 4.Oliver's fleece judging skills put to the test again 5, 6, 7. Some prize winning Shetland Sheep 8. Charlie Simpson and a herring feast 9. Cool footgear and a woolly dog 10, 11. More beautiful Shetland Sheep posing for the camera 12. Tractor love 13, 14. Elizabeth Johnson of Shetland Handspun's beautiful things 15 and 16. Yummy wool in the sun (which decided to make an appearance after weeks of grey, woop woop). 

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seaweed

Shetland Sheep spend their days ambling around the coastline eating heather and seaweed. This diet, along with the weather conditions, is what gives the wool it's lustre, fineness and bounce.  We've said this all before but we thought it was about time we paid homage to the humble seaweed (not so much the weather, that can wait for some other time... or maybe never).

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Zero Waste

Reading about the Zero-Waste course at Parson's School of Fashion reminded me of just how great hand-knitting is, particularly in terms of how little waste it produces. This is before you even start to consider the sustainable qualities of real wool as a fibre. 

Then I had this mini brainwave, where I was reminded of just how amazing Shetland Wool really is. I mean, we all know that it's lovely, but when you're working with something every day, or knitting with it all the time, you forget  - I guess this applies to a lot of lovely things that get lost in the sea of everydayness! Most Shetland Sheep have a completely natural diet, and their wool is processed in the only plant in the world to be recognised for it's grounbreaking environmental and ecological standards.

So, this post is a reminder to myself not to forget (does that even make sense?) how great Shetland Sheep and their wool is. And maybe even a reminder not to forget other nice things too.

Now if only we could hand-knit denim jeans, the world would be an even better place!

Zero Waste Garment / course description:

"This course presents a new way of exploiting and building upon the students’ existing design and technical skills with focus on sustainability in fashion design. It introduces the students to designing a garment without creating fabric waste in the process. In designing and producing a zero-waste garment, the students will develop a deeper understanding of the relationships between cloth, fashion design, patternmaking and draping, and in a broader sense, the connections between material, design process and final product. On completion the students will be able to utilize patternmaking and draping as tools for innovative, sustainable fashion design. In this course sustainability provides a tool for the students to examine their design practices in a critical light."

PS. We love Ecco-Eco, where I found out about Zero-Waste.

The Middle

Yesterday Oliver and Derek made the first move into the aptly named 'Middle store', which is tucked between our Wool Store, where the raw wool is dropped off by our suppliers, and the yarn store, where we sell yarn and post out woolly parcels. They'll now start the mammoth task of individually hand sorting all of the coloured Shetland wool. They will go through every single fleece (all 7,000 of them or thereabouts) and separate the finer grades (for example the wool that comes from the sheep's neck) used in hand-knit yarns, knitwear and blankets from the coarser wool (for example from the back legs) which we put in our 100% Shetland Wool carpets so that nothing is wasted, and our suppliers get the very most for their wool.

The contents of our middle store is really quite precious. Of the 250,000kilos of Shetland Wool that we deal with each year (which represents over 80% of Shetland's total wool clip), only about 10,000kilos of this is coloured wool. We give our suppliers a premium for their coloured wool to encourage the breeding of coloured sheep. I was talking with one of our suppliers just the other day and he was delighted that he'd managed to get a coloured ram, and is looking forward to coloured lambs this spring. So, first hand evidence that this work is paying off! Fingers crossed for a very colourful wool season in 2011...

1 The wall
2 The middle store
3 The inroad

4 The man (6' 4" Oliver)

progress in two zero one one

1. Shetland Sheep, Trondra

2. Fine place for a bath, Trondra

Taken on the morning of the 1st. 

Let's make sure it's a good year for the Shetland Sheep. Even better than the last. 

www.shetlandwoolbrokers.co.uk

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